A telephone user, hereafter called a subscriber, may, by using a modem, connect to an ISP (Internet Service Provider) and thus get access to the Internet through his regular voice telephone. The drawback is that while the subscriber is using his internet account (surfing) his phone is busy and therefore anyone dialling to the subscriber will get a busy-tone. This can be solved as described in the Swedish application SE-9602212-4 by forwarding calls directed to the subscriber to a voice gateway. The voice gateway handles the translation between voice and internet and the subscriber will receive a message indicating a waiting voice call and can connect to the calling party using state-of-the-art voice-over-internet technology. This way the subscriber may simultaneously be connected to the internet and use his voice phone.
The subscriber may also place an outgoing call through the voice gateway in a similar manner. For a deeper description of the above mentioned ideas please refer to SE-9602212-4.
When the subscriber places a voice call using the voice gateway, it seems, from the network operators point of view as if the voice gateway made the call and thus should be charged for the call. This is of course not acceptable but is not solved in the related art.
The present invention disclose a method and a apparatus for solving the problem with how to be able to charge for an outgoing voice call placed by a subscriber who is simultaneously performing an internet session.
The purpose of the present invention is thus to be able to charge for an outgoing voice call, placed by a subscriber during an internet session.
The problem, described above, regarding how to charge a subscriber for an outgoing call placed during an ongoing internet session is solved by in a call record associate the destination and duration of the outgoing call with the user. This association can be based on the users A-number, user-id, Ip-adress etc.